Rebellion & Safe Places

I just listened to the latest episode of On Being titled "The Inner Life of Rebellion" featuring Parker Palmer and Courtney Martin. While hunting through the transcript for Palmer's definition of safe place I found the following bit on rebellion. I am a rebel, and there's nothing wrong with that. From the transcript:

“It’s an act of rebellion to show up as someone trying to be whole.” And I would add, as someone who believes that there is a hidden wholeness beneath the very evident brokenness of our world, and somebody who wants to say that somehow part of that hidden wholeness is love, part of that hidden wholeness is our fellow feeling for each other, part of that hidden wholeness is a desire to make this thing work, and to work it out together, the act of persisting in those fundamental beliefs that something better is possible. I think this is courage. And I try to call myself to it every day. And I often fail...

So, rebellion can be that very small thing of swimming upstream against a tide of cynicism or against a tide of scarcity, and trying to witness to that in your life day in and day out. And it can really, really make you hurt." Parker Palmer

This brings to the fore a distinction that I reached in a meeting just this morning. I wrote a bit not too long ago regarding being "OK" vs. there's nothing wrong. At the time I couldn't really verbalize my quibble with the "I'm OK... It'll be OK..." thing. I just got it this morning, perhaps obvious to everyone else... Just by the act of saying that (It will be OK) you're assuming the opposite... that there is something wrong that it's NOT OK in this moment or it was in the past or may in the future Not be OK that there is something wrong. What I surrender to is the fact, TRULY THERE IS NOTHING WRONG, EVER! What I rebel against is the cultural idea that there is automatically, always something wrong. The belief that things need to be "fixed." 

That dovetails nicely into the following quote about safe places... LOVE THIS! 

"So, I think first of all, safe space needs a facilitator. I don’t think it happens automatically. And I think the role of the facilitator is to keep the space safe, even when someone tries to break the safety. I think there are some simple rules, there are some not so simple rules, but one of the simplest is no fixing, no saving, no advising, and no correcting each other. Well, what we’re going to do in the absence of those behaviors, is we’re going to learn to listen deeply to each other, and we’re going to learn to ask honest, open questions to hear each other into speech. Which I think is another of the most critical tasks of our time. So many people unseen, unheard — they need to be heard into speech. So there are things we can do, but it’s a discipline." Parker Palmer

I'm craving this safe space he describes. It makes me cry, literally, that I don't have such a space as this. I'm feeling lost and alone, drifting and questioning AND I surrender AND I know there's nothing wrong!

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